In the late '60s and early '70s, the spine-cracked paperback editions of
Hermann Hesse (Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, Magister Ludi) stood in a
haphazard pile beside every mattress on the floor, next to the roach
clips and Earth Shoes. The American counterculture claimed the Swabian
mystic as a guru of its own discovery, its subterranean priest. That
was perhaps an instructive case of self-absorbed audience imitating
self-obsessed author. In fact, Hesse during his astonishingly long
career had been appropriated by three other generations (in Germany,...